The Daily - What the Japanese Think of the Olympics

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

After last year’s postponement, both the International Olympic Committee and the Japanese government are determined that the Tokyo Games will take place this summer.But the public in Japan appears unconvinced: About 85 percent of people say they fear that the Olympics will cause a rebound of the virus in the country.Will the sense of discontent fade as the Games begin?Guest: Motoko Rich, the Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times.Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Why haven’t the Tokyo Games been canceled? The answer lies in billions of dollars, years of work and thousands of athletes who can’t wait any longer.Japan’s latest outbreak is receding and vaccinations are slowly picking up, but health experts warn that the government must remain vigilant.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedailyTranscripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Despite the fact that fewer than 10% of its population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, Japan says that the Olympic Games will be played this summer in Tokyo. Kevin Roos spoke to our colleague, Motoko Rich, about why the Japanese people remain so ambivalent about the idea.

It's Monday, June 28th. Hello. Nice to see you. Good to see you. So, we've all been watching and waiting to see whether the Olympics are actually going to happen. And now it's a month out, and it seems like they're on. It does. It's sort of hard to believe. They were postponed last year and now we're at this point we're kind of amazed that it's going to happen in about a month. And I guess on one hand that

makes sense because we are in a moment of recovery. More and more people are getting vaccinated. But on the other hand, like my impression is that Japan and many parts of the world, in fact, are not nearly as vaccinated as we are here in the United States. And it also occurs to me that like the Olympics is kind of the perfect super spreader event. Like you've got all these people coming from all different parts of the world, bringing with them all kinds of regional and local diseases possibly. And so I wonder if actually having the Olympics now is a good idea. You and the Japanese public both are wondering that exact same thing. I mean, I think there's a lot of anxiety. Japan's borders have been closed for well over a year.

And so all of a sudden you're going to have thousands of people, tens of thousands of people from over 200 countries descending on Japan all at once. And of course, a lot of them will be vaccinated. But as we're already seeing, some of them may have had the Sino vaccine that has bled to some outbreaks in some countries. We've already had two Ugandan athletes test positive since landing in Japan. Japan itself doesn't have the virus completely under control. And as you say, it's not nearly as vaccinated as the United States or Europe. So there are all kinds of reasons to worry about the public health implications of this event. You're absolutely right.

But they're still doing it. They're absolutely still doing it. It seems bound and determined. It feels like a runaway train. There's no stopping it. And on a very broad level, why is that? Why are they so determined to hold the Olympics? Well, I think there are two reasons and two kind of main parties here. We've got the International Olympic Committee that really wants the Games to go ahead. They really don't want to cancel them. They've already postponed them for a year. They make a lot of money off the broadcast, right? So they need to have the Games go ahead. They need the athletes to compete

so they can put them on television. And for Japan, there's many reasons, in fact, to want to hold the Olympics. They've waited for a whole year. They've invested over $15 billion in preparing for this event. $3 billion of that came in the last year alone during the postponement. And they also see this symbolically as a very important event that will sort of showcase Japan to the world that they have recovered. as a very important event that will sort of showcase Japan to the world that they have recovered. And say more about that symbolic recovery. What do you mean? 2011 was probably the worst disaster that Japan has experienced in about a century. The ground began to shake. 32 million people here in Tokyo braced themselves for the worst.

It was a huge magnitude 9 earthquake. An earthquake so strong it literally shifted the Earth's axis by about 25 centimeters. And then round two as the tsunami sirens wailed. Which led to a devastating tsunami that killed more than 19,000 people. The walls of water crash ashore with astonishing power, swallowing everything in the way. And then it also caused a massive nuclear meltdown. An explosion shortly after the quake at this power plant

damaged a building housing a reactor, causing a radioactive leak and the evacuation of a 12-mile radius. 150,000 people who lived near the plant were forced to evacuate. So when they bid for the Olympics, it was just a couple of years after that disaster. It was 2013. And as then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, this would be a symbol to show the world that Japan had recovered and also something to kind of inspire and revitalize the

Japanese public themselves. Right. So it sort of feels like every time the Olympics are held, the host country basically uses it as a kind of signal, a way to like send a message to the world. I'm thinking about like Beijing and that opening ceremony they had with all the amazing like synchronized marching. And it was sort of an announcement that like China is a global superpower. And so it seems like you're saying this time for Japan, the message they were hoping to send was not so much like, we have arrived on the global stage as we are back. We have recovered from this terrible catastrophe. We are ready to assume our former position. Exactly. And it's, you know, it's kind of a glorious propaganda opportunity,

right? You have weeks in which your country is showcased on international television. And I think a lot of what Japan wanted to get out of this was, hey, come and visit us. I mean, all Olympic host cities want that, right? They have lots and lots of kind of propaganda-type advertisements that run during the Olympics and soft features that run on the government-friendly TV stations and what have you, like, look at our beautiful country, come visit. So that's what Japan hosting the Olympics was supposed to symbolize to the rest of the world. But what did this plan to host the Olympics mean to the Japanese people? I think overwhelmingly they were just excited about it.

This was a very popular event before things kind of went south. Say more about that. What do you mean by going south? So, I mean, the first thing was that the build itself came under a cloud. There were questions about corruption involved in Tokyo winning as host city. Last month, the French investigating magistrates indicted involved in Tokyo winning as host city. Last month, the French investigating magistrates indicted Tsunekatsu Takeda for allegedly making two payments of over 200 million U.S. dollars.

And then there was this question about the new national stadium. Reports say it could cost more than, get this, $2 billion. And then there was this new logo that they designed. Now Olympics organizers are scrapping the logo after allegations of plagiarism. So there were all these sort of little nips at the heels of the glow of the Olympics. And then COVID hit.

So by early 2020, COVID is breaking out across the world. And at that point, the Olympics were supposed to happen that summer, just a few months away. What did Japan and the Olympic Committee decide to do? Well, for a little while, the Tokyo organizers and the Japanese government seemed to believe that they could pull it off. Partly because Japan was frankly just not suffering as much as the rest of the world. So I don't think they quite had their heads around how disastrous the pandemic had become. And they had put in all kinds of measures with the Japanese public that seemed to be working. You know, everyone was

wearing masks and doing social distancing and working from home and what have you. But as things started to really go bad and get worse across Europe and the United States, it became clear that even if Japan was doing OK, there was no way that the whole world could come together in four months. And so on March 24th, 2020, in partnership with the International Olympic and Paralympic Committee, they decided to postpone for a year. And this was unprecedented. It's never been postponed before. It's been canceled. And in fact, Tokyo was supposed to host one of those canceled Olympics

during World War II, 1940. But this is the first time that an Olympics has been postponed for a year. And Japan did relatively well compared to the rest of the world in terms of managing the virus itself. So I think there was this sense in 2020 that things were under control. And so for the organizers and the government, it was this feeling like, okay, we've managed it, and then we're going to turn to kind of the albeit logistical nightmare of restaging an event a year later and inviting the world, but we sort of feel like we have it under control. But then after the break of the new year in 2021,

things really started to change in Japan. How so? So basically the success that Japan had had managing the virus in 2020 started to deteriorate in 2021. I mean, think partly because people were starting to get a little bit complacent about it, but also they weren't getting vaccinated. And so those two forces conspired to drive the infection rate up. Various cities, including Tokyo, were setting records of caseloads and record deaths. And so all of a sudden, the government had to initiate some clapdowns, putting various cities, including Tokyo, into a state of emergency. And people were starting to get a little bit scared. And at the same time,

they were seeing around the world on their TV or their Instagram feeds that people in the United States and the UK and Europe were starting to get vaccinated. And it wasn't really happening in Japan. It was taking so long to get the vaccination rollout going. And so people were starting to get worried. And now the scenario where Japan was sort of under control was no longer true. I guess I would have assumed that Japan would be very proactive about getting vaccines for its citizens. Like it's a rich country, has good access to global markets, and has a lot riding on the success of these Olympics, they must have known that vaccines and access to vaccines would be kind of the difference between

having a successful Olympics and not. So why aren't more Japanese people getting vaccinated? I mean, it is a true puzzle because when you put it that way, and many people have, it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't have done everything they could to get everybody vaccinated as fast as they could. But there were a number of factors in play. One is that there is quite a lot of vaccine hesitancy in the Japanese public. There has been previously and specifically for vaccines developed outside of Japan. So there was a concern within the kind of health ministry and the health establishment that if we rush this out, that everyone will refuse to get it and that will be counterproductive. And so one of the things that the Japanese health ministry said that they need to do

and the kind of regulatory authorities was that they needed to approve the drugs themselves. And that part of the process is they needed to conduct clinical trials. So that was gonna take some time. Then on top of that, when they negotiated their contracts with Pfizer and Moderna and AstraZeneca, the people who negotiated these contracts were not hard charging trade negotiators.

They were health ministry bureaucrats. And so they probably didn't negotiate very good contracts. So when I talked to Pfizer, for example, they said, yes, we will fulfill our contracts to get them our vaccines by the end of 2021. So I think there was a supply issue at the beginning. Also, Japan is very, very cautious in matters of healthcare.

And because of the vaccine hesitancy, the only people who are authorized to give vaccines are doctors and nurses. So whereas in the United States, you can walk into any Walgreens or Walmart or CVS and a pharmacist can give you a job, that is not the case in Japan. And so that kind of throttles things. And so there were just so many factors that were slowing it down at the beginning. And so when it came to the Olympics, I think people were starting to get genuinely angry. There was this feeling that there was this focus, almost a monomaniacal focus,

because the central government, the Tokyo government, and the organizing committee kept talking about, you know, we are going to hold this successful Olympics. But instead of talking about it as a symbol of recovery from the Fukushima disaster of 2011, they're now talking about it being a triumph over the pandemic. And the public was saying, we don't see a triumph over the pandemic. We're seeing actually the opposite. And why are you

spending all this energy on holding this Olympics? And why are you inviting a potential super spreader event to our country? You know, as the days moved forward, the torch relay started, people were starting to get more and more angry. relay started, people were starting to get more and more angry. There were some protests. They're chanting for the Olympics to be canceled. They are scared and angry. There were people gathering signatures on petitions to have them canceled. It's too dangerous. Certainly on social media, there was a lot of outcry.

And so it got to the point where in March of this year, close to 80% of those polled were saying the Games should either be postponed again or just canceled altogether. So people were definitely angry about that notion that there was so much energy being expended on holding the Olympics that they thought could genuinely be dangerous. We'll be right back. So the Japanese people are basically saying like, something's got to give. Like, we can't host the Olympics, this potential global super spreader event, and also not have access to vaccines, which seems pretty reasonable. And I guess I'm wondering what the Japanese government's case is for pushing forward with this.

Obviously, they have a huge interest in having the Olympics happen, financial, national pride, etc. financial, national pride, et cetera. But they also have a huge interest in not having a massive COVID spike that could result in a bunch of infections and deaths. Correct. I mean, it is interesting that they have these reasons to want to push ahead, and yet you would think that the desire

to avoid a true disaster, you don't want to be known as the Olympics with the asterisk by it. This is the Olympics that caused a rebound of COVID after a year and a half of everyone going through this devastating, traumatic pandemic. But I think there's a combination of a lot of factors. I mean, I think there's a little bit of part of that national pride is this sense that we can manage it. We can handle it. We've got all these precautions in place and we're going to pull this off. And I certainly think that politically for the current government and certainly for the current prime minister, that he sort of knows that his career

is dead in the water if he cancels the event. So I think that's partly it. I think that there is also this concern that they don't want to be overtaken by China. The whole point of hosting the Olympics is to show that Japan is back and is still a global power. And Beijing is the next host of the Winter Olympics, and those will be happening in 2022. So if China becomes the first post-pandemic Olympics, and make no mistake, they will certainly market it that way if they end up being so, Japan does not want that to happen. And so there's a certain sense of kind of in a geopolitical stakes that they want to make sure that they have this marker here. And the third reason is something that's

external to Japan, which is that they have a contract with the International Olympic Committee, which states that they can't cancel this. And if they do, they would be financially on the hook for quite a lot of money. They've already put in $15 billion. And then if they're on the hook for sort of fines for canceling it, that would just be beyond the pale, I think, for them. So they really feel like they're caught and under pressure by the contract that they really can't pull out. So they're kind of damned if they don't and maybe damned if they do. Yeah, there's a good chance they're damned if they do. I mean, even though people seem to have become a little more resigned to the fact that they're

going ahead, that the polls are not quite as dramatic about it, they should be canceled or they should be postponed. But still, over 85% of people are genuinely concerned that the Olympics will cause a rebound in the coronavirus in Japan. And the truly scary part of it is it's not just about Japan, right? It's about the whole world, because this is an asymptomatically transmitted disease, and everybody's going to leave the country and be on planes. So there could be outbreaks that affect the Japanese public, but there could also be outbreaks that affect people after they go home. So, Motoko, what is Japan actually doing to try to pull this off? I'm thinking about the NBA bubble, which seems like it was pretty successful,

the Major League Baseball non-bubble, which didn't turn out so well. What have the organizers of the Tokyo Olympics learned from watching these other sports leagues try to contain the pandemic while still holding their events? And what can we expect these Olympics to look like? I mean, I think a lot of what they've learned, both through managing the pandemic internally in Japan, where, by the way, they are holding sports events. where, by the way, they are holding sports events, and by watching the events that you reference, is that you've got to reduce human-to-human contact as much as possible. That's kind of counter to what the Olympics are about.

I mean, the whole notion of the Olympics is bringing the world together, and everything about the rules about these Olympics are about keeping them as far apart as possible. So the athletes cannot arrive before five days before their competition, and they must leave two days after they finish competing, so they won't get to hang out in the village. And as a kind of marker of that, this will be the first Olympics since 1988 when condoms will not be handed out in the village. There's no partying.

There's no going to the local bars and restaurants. Everybody has to get tested every day. And when the spectators are in the stands, they're not even allowed to shout. They have to just clap. I went to a soccer match last year that were conducted under the rules that will be imposed on the Olympics. And, you know, we all had to sit two seats in between us, masks on, no drinking, no cheering. I mean, it was so quiet in the stands that I could hear every call on the field. And I could even hear the guy who was like crinkling a wrapper of three rows in front of me. So everything about this Olympics suggests not fun. Wow. That's amazing. I mean, sounds like it will be so different from any

Olympics we've ever seen, where we expect these huge cheering crowds decked out in their country's colors, cheering on their country's athletes, fist bumping, high-fiving, celebratory drinking. None of that is going to happen. And so I guess I'm, I just wonder if instead of showing the world that Japan is back and the pandemic is over, and this is this triumphal moment of return, these Olympics, even if they're successful at containing the spread of COVID, could shine the brightest of lights on the fact that Japan is not back and the pandemic is not over. You know, if you're one of us sitting on your couch watching this all happen, the picture that you get might be not how normal things are, but how abnormal.

I think that's 100% correct that you will be thinking how abnormal it is. And I think there is going to be a certain proportion of the public, both in Japan and outside, who will definitely think that this was a colossal waste of energy and money. But in fairness, I don't think we should discount what the Olympics mean to a certain component of the public that loves them and does feel this sort of sense of international coming together and then the national pride of any country for the medals that it wins

and for the athletes themselves to be able to put themselves in this competition that they've worked all their lives for. All of that will still be present, but I think it will have been tainted by all that has come before. Right. We will still be able to cheer for Simone Biles, for example. And unlike the people who are actually in Tokyo

watching the Olympics live, those of us at home will be allowed to cheer with our mouths and not just our hands. That is correct, yes. You will not have to repress your joy. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Here's what else you need to know today. What are you telling families who are still hoping to find their loved ones? One thing, I'm telling them that we are working 24 hours a day, nonstop, nothing else on our mind,

with the only objective of pulling their family members out of that rubble safely. The mayor of the Florida town where a condominium tower collapsed on Thursday, killing at least nine residents, said that workers are undertaking a major search and rescue operation in the hope of finding more than 150 people who remain unaccounted for. Listen, buildings don't fall down in America. That is a third world phenomenon. In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, the mayor, Charles Burkhead, said that the cause of the collapse is still unknown. It's very disturbing. There was something obviously very, very wrong at this building, and we need to get to the

bottom of it. But a consultant hired by the condo's board three years ago had discovered that the columns and walls of the parking garage beneath the building were cracking and crumbling and urgently recommended repairs that were never completed. Today's episode was produced by Soraya Shockley, Jessica Chung, Rob Zipko, and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Paige Cowett and Lisa Chow, and engineered by Corey Schreppel. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.